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BelinCan t1_j8sso89 wrote

What's up with Bangladesh?

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ebonit15 t1_j8togiu wrote

Probably can't afford a regular army, so trains citizens, and arms them for a possible future war.

It is totally my guess, though.

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WilliamMorris420 t1_j8visc8 wrote

But 1 in 24 people is an active service, armed paramilitary?

I could understand it, if they were disaster workers. Dealing with the annual monsoon, typhoon season and the occasional earthquake. The only countries that they have to worry about is Burma (Myanmar) and to a lesser extent PRC as they don't share a border with PRC. Who would have to go through India and Bhutan to get to Bangladesh.

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ebonit15 t1_j8vpb9f wrote

They have India I guess. Again, I am just guessing.

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WilliamMorris420 t1_j8vppnp wrote

Since its independence battle with Pakistan. India and Bangladesh have, gotten on well. With India supporting them against Pakistan.

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ebonit15 t1_j8vpwb5 wrote

Then they have Pakistan!

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WilliamMorris420 t1_j8vqz7t wrote

Which is on the other side of India. It's a long old trek, about 920+ miles away. With no chance of Pakistan invading through India.

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AdminsAreLazyID10TS t1_j8vuaf3 wrote

Like that's ever stopped jingoism before

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WilliamMorris420 t1_j8vvd44 wrote

Pakistan can not invade through the top of India, especially just to invade Bangladesh. It's not a country like Belgium, that you invade as it's in the way of getting to a bigger country.

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konichiwa-minna_san t1_j9nhh9l wrote

Can't say exactly why for Bangladesh, but I can tell why it's so for India.

India's paramilitary forces (multiple forces collectively termed as Central Armed Police Forces or CAPF) have been kept at equally high numbers to the armed forces to prevent coups. This has been the policy ever since first government post- independence. The CAPF come under the Ministry of Home Affairs and the recruitment is done similar to police recruitment. The higher-ups come exclusively from the elite Indian Police Service, which is a bureaucratic institute with no relation to the Army. So the command structure of the Army and the CAPF are kept separate.

This in turn means, if some day the Army decides to organize a coup, the CAPF will be called into action to respond. In the past, the CAPF had been provided gear subpar to the Army. But in the last decade, CAPF has been getting nearly as good gear as the Army and have also been assigned to roles which were hitherto assigned to the Army. Now you can see them fighting insurgency in Kashmir, which until a decade ago was the Army's job mainly. This is not to say, India's goverment views its Army with suspicion and the Indian Army has been notoriously apolitical. Yet, prevention is better than cure.

Coming to Bangladesh, this is just a guess. But Bangladesh models many of its policies based on India's. The founding father of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated along with his whole family in an attempted Army coup. His daughter alone survived as she was in India at that time. Rn, she is the country's Prime Minister. I'd guess, the Bangladeshi government doesn't want a repeat of that incident and decided to have a strong paramilitary force separate from the Army as a possible counterweight.

Now, as a contrast, neighboring Pakistan has had like a dozen coups ever since it's inception. The Army holds a huge sway over the government and politics there. That's perhaps something they got very wrong.

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